Lost In Transit (Poetry)

I haven’t thought about that painting in a while
its image slipped from memory
seems like a face I’m missing now

So very easy to lose touch when moving house
other walls, changing symmetry
shuffling books to fit less space

There’s little hope of reconstructing any room
reassemble familiar groups
always there’s something gets pushed out

When I think about that purchase years ago
what impulse prompted me to buy
that scene — one solitary tree

Its appeal so raw and sudden, the asking price
way high and a month’s rent behind
yet I simply had to have it

What it satisfied in me is past explaining
maybe, like love, there’s no logic
only an overwhelming need

I hung it like a trophy and kept it dusted
the artist surely was a man
I understood — shared something with

For I adored the sense of longing he outlined
economy of palette, plus
emptiness raggedly defined

in one bent-near-to-horizontal mountain ash
that clung-so to a barren rock
while cold sun kissed its awkward limbs

It was Wuthering Heights and unrequited love
for me it held that poetry
and Turner surely knew such skies

I’m sure it’s upstairs in the attic safely wrapped
and stored with scores of other things
I can’t bring myself to part with

Avoiding fears it could be lost — overlooked in
all the flurry seeing as how
I’d left it propped beside our step